A player was going through the Adventures Dark and Deep Players Manual and asked the following:

Regarding the Jester’s and Bard’s verbal patter skills, how do you reconcile them with the fact that all players should be able to try to befuddle a group or try to have them distrust someone through pure dialog with the DM?

My answer: I generally play it by ear (heh).

Ahem. Seriously, I tend to encourage the players to try their verbal patter on me (as GM) and then roll. If their actual attempts were lame, but they made the roll, then they succeeded anyway. If they were genuinely good at the table, I might give them a bonus to the roll, so if it was a mediocre roll, they might still succeed.

Alternatively, it would be the case that if someone who did not have verbal patter as a class skill did a lousy job of trying to actual befuddle me at the table, they’d fail. If they did a great job, they’d probably succeed. They just wouldn’t have the chance to succeed on a die roll even when they do a bad job at the table.

Strickler pointed to board games as one of the community-driven enthusiast areas that the platform has been able to support — noting that as of this week Kickstarter will pass $100 million having been cumulatively pledged to board games.

“Last year there was actually more money pledged to board games than video games,” added Strickler. “It’s like $55 million in board games. It’s kind of counterintuitive to the way that we think the world is moving but I think the board game market on Kickstarter is very illustrative of what it is that we actually do.

“I remember meeting someone is 2009 or 2010 — really early for us — who said that Kickstarter was the first thing to change the board game industry since the early 70s. Basically it’s this huge fan community… They weren’t in a scale to where the Parker Brothers or Milton Bradley would drop a huge chunk of change on it. So we ended up stepping in and being this perfect conduit for these communities to exist.”

There’s more at the link, of course, including a reiteration of Kickstarter’s intention not to get into the company-equity business. That decision probably has a lot to do with the legal implications; there are all sorts of Federal regulations around such activity, and Kickstarter probably feels it’s just too much trouble and risk.

New tools now power the creation of tabletop games — many in the strategy or fantasy genres — from idea to delivery. Crowdfunding sites provide the seed money and offer an early gauge of demand. Machines like 3-D printers can rapidly create figurines, dice and other prototype game pieces. And Amazon, the online retail giant, can handle shipping and distribution, cutting out the need for middlemen.

Sales have followed. While the video game business long ago eclipsed its low-tech cousin, sales of tabletop games have continued to grow. … Amazon says board game sales increased by a double-digit percentage from 2012 to 2013.

The Castle of the Mad Archmage is designed as an old-fashioned “funhouse” megadungeon, with tricks and traps, many different factions of monsters, and can provide literally years of mayhem, dismemberment, and other fun.

The adventure is comprised of three books; the Adventure Book, the Map Book, and an Illustration Book with pictures to show your players what they see at key and interesting points in the dungeon (due to a limitation of the RPGNow site, you must add all three of these books to your cart separately).

They did have a couple of questions, and I thought I’d just cover them here real quick (I’ll also send an email, in case they don’t read this). (Caution: Spoilers! – actually there are spoilers throughout the podcast too, so don’t listen if you think you’re going to play in the adventure.)

I’m pretty sure the grey monks are original, and not found in Gygax’s dungeon. I don’t recall hearing about them…

The gate to Lewis Carroll’s Wonderland is in the mushroom forest in the Greater Caverns.

Unfortunately the three books can’t be bundled on DriveThruRPG/RPGNow because of a technical limitation of the site. You can’t do bundles of print books, so you have to add them separately to your cart. The pricing for the books was adjusted so that the total is what it would have been if I had been able to do a print bundle.

The maps were printed in their own book based on playtest feedback. It’s *far* easier to have a separate book rather than needing to flip back-and-forth in one larger book. I found that out myself, too, running it for my group at home as well as at conventions. When the decision was made to do an illustration book (because the fans overwhelmingly said that was something they’d like to see), it made sense to treat it the same way.

You’re correct about the designer’s notes that were in the original free version – they were excised because, as a published product under the OGL, I was much more sensitive to copyright issues. I might do some designer’s notes here on the blog, if people think it would be fun and/or helpful. Let me know!

I can’t believe it. Two months after it was released, Castle of the Mad Archmage is still in the top ten best-sellers list on RPGNow.com. That kind of support really means a lot, and I would like to thank each and every one of you who has bought my magnum opus megadungeon, either in pdf or hard copy.

Woo-hoo! “Swords of the Damned,” the first-ever novel based on Adventures Dark and Deep™ novel is now available in hard copy! Here’s the cover blurb:

Morcar, a professional adventurer down on his luck, is shanghaied into attempting his riskiest mission yet – venturing into the labyrinthine tunnels underneath the ancient city of Graybarrow. Accompanied by a band of desperate renegades and rogues, he faces both the dangers of the unknown depths and a force that lies beyond death itself, with cultists and warriors on his trail. Can he conquer the Swords of the Damned, or is he destined to join their ranks…

Morcar, a professional adventurer down on his luck, is shanghaied into attempting his riskiest mission yet – venturing into the labyrinthine tunnels underneath the ancient city of Graybarrow. Accompanied by a band of desperate renegades and rogues, he faces both the dangers of the unknown depths and a force that lies beyond death itself, with cultists and warriors on his trail. Can he conquer the Swords of the Damned, or is he destined to join their ranks…

The book will be available in hardcopy in a few weeks, but don’t let that stop you from getting the ebook first (the ebook and hardcopy versions will be sold separately). It’s a nifty adventure novel, and well worth the $3.99 to get it on your Kindle. Personally, I can’t wait to have a dead tree version in my hand, but then again I am an old grognard, and set in my analog ways. This is also the first book in a trilogy, so more fun to look forward to!

At long last, the print version of Castle of the Mad Archmage is now available!

The free serialized version from several years ago has been added to, scrubbed, edited, and generally improved upon. The adventure now is self-contained, from the surface ruins to the dreaded lowest levels, with a separate map book and illustration book (with pictures to show the players what they see at given places in the dungeons). You can get all three of the books that make up this adventure at RPGNow.com:

All three books are available in pdf format as well, and as always you get a free pdf copy when you order the hard copy books. The adventure book was written with the Adventures Dark and Deep rules in mind, which means it can easily be used with most OSR-type rules.

You can get get the whole set for $20 pdf, $35 with a softcover adventure book, and $45 with a hardcover adventure book (the map and illustration books are only available in softcover).

It’s been a long time getting here, but I hope you have as much fun with it as I have over the years.